Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Ah, well that would explain it! I shall certainly remember now. Thank you very much. :slight_smile:

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Thinking about it, I’m sure I’ve already come across this but forgotten it. Feeling a bit of a berk is a good aide memoire hopefully!

Tiny thing, when I’ve been on other forums elsewhere it’s been the thing to read the whole of a thread before commenting to avoid repeating and potentially wasting other people’s time. But I tried and on here I am getting a bit bogged down sometimes wading through stuff I have no idea about. I’m only on level 1 and not trying to read/write yet. Having interacted a bit I think probably it’s not at all necessary to wade through that. All part of it being a very friendly forum. I am getting the hang of it slowly, and the advice in the FAQ that people progress better if they do get involved in the forum is encouraging me to stick with it.

Might it be an idea to add to the community FAQ https://www.saysomethingin.com/static/howto/HowTo02JoinTheSSiWCommunity.pdf something about the forum being very informal and don’t feel you have to wade through 300 (or nearly 2000!) posts just to say hi or ask something, just start a new thread? My thought is that might help it be more encouraging for other beginners to join in too. Avoids people potentially getting discouraged by all you super advanced speakers and learners chatting away about grammar things that seem a bit baffling for a new learner.

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If you use the magnifying glass symbol and search for a few key words relating to your enquiry, it will list any previous discussions that include those words whatever thread they are in. But the worst that can happen is that someone directs you to an earlier discussion, so don’t worry about it. Anyway, sometimes a topic is worth repeating.

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In this kind of context, I’d expect to see:

Marchnata a chefnogaeth
or
Marchnata a chynhaliaeth (if it was about ongoing software support, for example).

Worth noticing that you’ve got a typo in ‘Marchanta’, in case you’re copying and pasting that… :slight_smile:

If this was being spoken, you’d probably hear ‘hanner cant o eiriau’, but written down, there’s something about the numeral that just makes that use of the singular (which is the absolute norm up to about 10ish) seem natural.

Welcome to the forum, Alice - and yes, please feel free to jump in and comment anywhere - no rules here about reading the whole of a thread… :slight_smile:

And thanks for your suggestion - we’re always trying to figure out the best ways to help people get used to the forum, so this idea will form part of our thoughts… :slight_smile:

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Can join you in that sentiment Colin. Ooops. This hasn’t appeared where I thought that it would ( Am refering to the 'berk as aide mem… bit)

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Marchnata a chynhaliaeth (or possibly chynhaliad) :slight_smile:

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I was wondering if Chynaliaeth, rather than chynhaliaeth would be the actual pronounciation? In my mind going from cyn to chyn seems to change the internal feel of the word (although I have no reason to have any legitimate feel for these things whatsoever). Out oif interest, I just googled and I can see both forms - I don’t know if that’s mispelling, regional variation or anything more?

Do you mean cynhaliaeth and cynhaliad? - Just related words with very similar meaning.

Or do you mean chynhaliaeth and chynaliaeth? - second one technically wrong, but possibly reflecting pronunciation in some areas.

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I meant what you described as the technically wrong dropping the h in the middle. I guess it is occasionally mispelt then, but I did wonder about it reflecting a bit of unofficial lenition, if that’s the correct word.

The nn versus nh business that you get in related words is connected with the stress accent…i.e. the stress shifting to AFTER the /n/ sound introduces an aspiration, e.g.

cYnnal > cynhAliodd

Nothing to do, incidentally, with lenition, which is usually a term used for Irish and Scottish Gaelic where it means (what we call for Welsh) Soft Mutation…they happen to use the h as a way to spell it…so Welsh B > F = Gaelic B > BH

:slight_smile:

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Well I have learned something interesting today with that example - there was something triggering me to ask the question and it must have been seeing words change from nn to nh on occasions as in your example.

many thanks

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R sometimes does this as well, to RH: Dw i’n aRos but aRHoswch!.

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True - same principle exactly, phonetically speaking anyway! :slight_smile:

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In translation I did it right thoudh, just here I obviously turned the letters around … Diolch.

It is about ongoing software support and since there are 3 versions of the same word (which probably their meaning is slightly different) I’ve just gone for the first one.

Thank you @garethrking. I’ve corrected the translation with second version you suggest although I don’t know why really. I just like it more. :slight_smile:

Thank you for help all.

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Hi,

I am extremely new here, just registered because I am fascinated by a Welsh word ‘Hiraeth’ - I want to write it in ancient Welsh (if I may call it that), and found this attached image on pinterest - my quick question, to anyone who can spare there time, is, which of these two versions is more correct?

Would really appreciate your help.

Thank you!
Ursula

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First, I know nothing about ancient Welsh scripts. But (to me) this looks more like Tolkein’s elvish language that he based on Welsh, not actual Welsh. I could easily be wrong, of course.

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I could be wrong too, but I agree it looks like Sindarin :blush:

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I believe the old script on many ancient celtic crosses etc in both wales and ireland is called ogham.

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I may be wrong, but I think the oldest book known is the book of Aneirin so I suppose writing hiraeth in script of that sort would be the nearest you could get. I know nothing about this, as I always read Aneirin and Taliesin in modern printed versions! I can’t read old script!
As for Ogham, that is definitely a specialist study as it is totally unlike Latin-based scripts!

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